Visualizing Cultures was launched at MIT in 2002 to explore the potential of the Web for developing innovative image-driven scholarship and learning. The VC mission is to use new technology and hitherto inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be).

Topical units to date focus on Japan in the modern world and early-modern China. The thrust of these explorations extends beyond Asia per se, however, to address "culture" in much broader ways—cultures of modernization, war and peace, consumerism, images of "Self" and "Others," and so on.

Images of every sort are introduced and examined here—in partnership with contributing institutions and collections, and with the collaboration of experts devoted to transcending the printed word and hard-bound text.

The Visualizing Cultures Curriculum offers a full complement of standards-compliant lessons, providing a pathway for teachers and students to become active historians and knowledgeable readers of images.